Aonghus McAnally to host of People of the Year Awards

One of Ireland"s best known faces Aonghus McAnally is to host the 2009 Athlone People of the Year Awards in the Radisson Hotel on Friday, April 24. The Awards, sponsored by Rehab, Athlone Town Council and the Westmeath Independent, have quickly become the social event of the year. The evening"s host Aonghus McAnally is one of the best known faces and voices in entertainment and has had a long association with Athlone, and in particular the RTÉ All Ireland Drama Festival. He explained this week he has come to Athlone the last few years for the drama festival and added that his late father Ray McAnally (The Mission, My Left Foot, Fourth Protocol and We"re No Angels) had adjudicated at the festival in the past. His mother Ronnie Masterson is also an actress and played the granny in Angela"s Ashes. Aonghus added that Athlone is a lovely part of the country and while visiting the town he had played golf in the area and taken a boat out on the Shannon. And while he is no stranger to Athlone, hosting the People of the Year Awards is not new to him either, as Aonghus has previously hosted the awards in Longford. He is married to actress Billie Morton (whom he met when he went to into the Abbey Theatre to play Oisin in the Christmas panto in 1977). It was no surprise that he ventured into show business starting off in the music business in the early 70s. He was the face of Saturday morning television in the 80s on Anything Goes and went on to other shows such as Evening Extra, The Big Top and The Lyrics Board, to name just a few. He has presented and produced radio programmes on RTÉ since 1988 and in the late 90s presented three TV shows in the UK. He presents the Mooney programme on RTÉ Radio 1 whenever Derek Mooney is on leave, and is a producer on the Tubridy Show on Radio 1. He is very much in demand as an after dinner speaker both here and in the UK.